svn commit: r312910 - in head: . etc/etc.pc98 etc/rc.d lib/libsysdecode libexec release release/doc release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/readme release/doc/share/example...

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday, February 01, 2017 01:35:56 PM Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 02:46:23PM -0800, John Baldwin wrote:
> 
> > On Tuesday, January 31, 2017 03:33:55 PM Warner Losh wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 3:20 PM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, January 28, 2017 02:22:15 AM Takahashi Yoshihiro wrote:
> > > >> Author: nyan
> > > >> Date: Sat Jan 28 02:22:15 2017
> > > >> New Revision: 312910
> > > >> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/312910
> > > >>
> > > >> Log:
> > > >>   Remove pc98 support completely.
> > > >>   I thank all developers and contributors for pc98.
> > > >>
> > > >>   Relnotes:   yes
> > > >
> > > > BTW, my impression was that there are some other device drivers
> > > > that are effectively PC-98 only (e.g. everything that uses scsi_low.c)
> > > > but they might have pccard attachments for use with PC-98 laptops?
> > > >
> > > > Perhaps Warner might know?
> > > >
> > > > It seems stg(4) had PCI variants, but nsp(4), ncv(4), and stg(4)
> > > > all came from NetBSD/pc98 via PAO.
> > > 
> > > These all work correctly on any PC Card machine. The only reason they
> > > came in this way was because these devices were original marketed only
> > > in Japan. I've used all these cards with external SCSI drives in the
> > > past.
> > > 
> > > As far as I know, only the if_snc driver, which was removed, is truly
> > > pc98 specific. It is wired in such a way that cannot be used in ibm-at
> > > compatible laptops.  IIRC, it had hard-wired memory decode lines that
> > > landed in the middle of the VGA graphics pages or BIOS low memory
> > > areas. I have one of these cards still, and it will be detected on my
> > > laptops, but can't work due to the required mappings.
> > > 
> > > Now, there's an different question about whether it is time to retire
> > > some of the now-ancient SCSI cards from the system, but that's a
> > > different kettle of fish that's larger than just nsp, ncv and stg.
> > 
> > Fair enough.  I haven't fully put away my 12 axe and am toying with
> > dropping any ISA-only storage and NIC drivers (and perhaps pccard-only
> > as well in that case).  Hardware that wants to use ISA/pccard for
> > storage is probably happier running 4.x anyway.  One question is if we
> > should drop ISA attachments in that case for drivers that support PCI
> > and ISA.  However, there's a fair list of ISA-only adapters that would
> > be a good place to start anyway.  One concern is to not drop any drivers
> 
> ps/2 keyboard, mouse, touchpads, lm sensors, etc?...

Those aren't storage or NICs.  There are many "legacy" device still present
in modern systems that we obviously have to support.  However, if you have
an ISA Adapter SCSI HBA in an ISA slot, the machine running that is probably
happier running 4.x than 12.0.

-- 
John Baldwin